Meaning of letter bank | Babel Free

Definitions

A type of cryptic device similar to an anagram, but in which fodder letters can be used more than once.

Examples

“One form of wordplay that’s proved both popular and fruitful in the National Puzzlers’ League—but has been used rarely if at all in cryptic crosswords—is the letter bank.”

“If you started out with the northeast pair of “Revolutionary War heroes” at 28A and 13D, you could be really confused — NATHAN HALE and ETHAN ALLEN aren’t anagrams, but they’ve got the same number of letters in their names — and the same letters, which satisfies the rules of the letter bank game.”

“That said, there’s perhaps less scope for that worry in the “reverse” kind of letter-bank clue ... Flexible source of characters in Ecclesiastes (7) ... like this one for ELASTIC, yet I find I prefer those where the fodder is shorter than the answer.”

CEFR level